Now, computer that heals itself

Researchers have created a computer, which can immediately recover from crashes by repairing corrupted data.

University College London computer scientist Peter Bentley and Christos Sakellariou invented the device, which has been dubbed a "systemic" computer, in which information is married up with instructions on what to do with it, New Scientist reported.

Each system of the device has a memory featuring context-sensitive information meaning it can only interact with other, similar systems.

Rather than using a program counter, the systems are executed at times chosen by a pseudorandom number generator, which is designed to mimic randomness of nature.

Bentley said that the systems then carry out their instructions simultaneously, with no system taking priority over the others.

The device also has multiple copies of its instructions, which are distributed across its many systems, which means that if one system gets corrupted the computer can access another clean copy to repair its code.

And unlike conventional operating systems that crash when they can't access a bit of memory, the systemic computer carries on regardless, as each system has its own memory.